Opinion More than ever, schools need forest service money Smoky Mountain News
hen the 1911 Weeks Act was passed, allowing the federal W government to purchase land and create a national forest system in the eastern United States, an agreement was estab-
lished between the federal government and rural counties where those lands were purchased. This agreement allowed counties where national forests were created to share 25 percent of the revenues derived from timber harvests on the newly-designated national forest lands, revenue which the counties came to rely on to fund rural schools and services. When timber prices and harvest volumes both drastically declined in the 1990s, so did the monies generated by the revenue sharing agreement, and many counties found themselves facing a fiscal crisis. Congress responded by creating the bipartisan Secure Rural Schools Act in 2000 that guaranteed an annual payment that was de-linked from resource extraction, giving the counties funding regardless of how much timber was cut on the local national forest. The act was a first attempt to help counties transition to a more diverse economic base in the face of declining timber production to take advantage of changing economic opportunities that related to recreation, restoration, and conservation. For Western North Carolina, this represents
Last issue of SMN painted a vivid picture
To the Editor: How incredibly serendipitous that your newspaper of Jan. 23 should headline the flooding and landslides that occurred during the four days of local heavy rains while at the same time highlighting the ongoing review of the Jackson County Steep Slope Ordinance by the Jackson County Commissioners and the County Planning Committee. To add spice to the stew, the column by Mr. Don Hendershot (The Naturalist’s Corner) reported the cuts by the N.C. legislature to the landslide mapping program midway through its work in Jackson County, effectively ending that program and leaving the county without a credible evaluation of the slide risks to current and future homeowners and to infrastructure in our county. Mr. Hendershot indicated the resultant savings from those program cuts saved the state ($1.4 million) while also pointing out that the cost of landslide remediation from a single incident in Maggie Valley has already cost the state that same amount. Page 6 of the paper reported additional slides in Maggie Valley during the past week at Rich Cove (site of the original slide) and at the head of Soco. No casualties this time excepting a car and a few trees falling on a house. My sympathies to those suffering losses, especially the recently retired couple in Macon County who lost their home of one year to a slide. I would agree that completion of the landslide mapping project in Jackson County will do nothing for those already occupying potential slide sites, except perhaps to warn those occupants to be aware of the consequences of significant rain events in their locale. For those with plans to build, the map would serve to let those people know that alternative building sites might be
over $10 million in payments to counties since the act’s renewal in 2008, with the counties receiving the highest payments being Cherokee, Graham and Macon. For these three counties, each has received around $250,000 annually to fund their respective school systems as well as to fund community-approved projects on public lands. Though this may not seem a huge amount given the size of most county school budgets, it is nonetheless significant given that our state school budget Guest Columnist has been cut $1.7 billion in the last two years. With the expiration of the Secure Rural Schools Act coming up this year, rural schools are now again faced with the possibility of yet another financial hit. On Jan. 15, the U.S. Forest Service announced the release of 2012 funds for all counties nationwide, with the amount totaling $323 million dollars. North Carolina’s allocation was $1.9 million, with the great majority of that going to the rural counties of Western North Carolina. These funds were part of a one-year reauthorization of the Secure Rural Schools program,
Brent Martin
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safer and much less expensive to them at some point in the future, especially in these “big storm” times. Whether the landslide mapping ever resumes in Jackson County is probably moot, but the results of recent weather events should certainly provide critical advice to the Jackson County Planning Committee as they evaluate the slope and cut/fill thresholds to be used in future home and infrastructure building decisions. Someone’s life may depend on it. Roy B. Osborn Cullowhee
Timber harvest at Devil’s Courthouse a good idea To the Editor: Nature abhors a vacuum. Mother Nature assures change. Organisms are constantly adapting, changing, improving, evolving. Understanding life cycles in nature assists man in many ways. We can collect water, grow vegetables, clear land, harvest timber, fish for food, hunt the wildlife and even recreate on our wild lands. Whatever “our” case may be, nature is constantly in motion, changing. Stop mowing your lawn and watch a small forest begin: berries, scrubby pines, locust trees, and soon, poplar trees. The forest grows on over a span of time. Our southern Appalachian mountain region naturally grows incredible hardwood trees of many varieties: red oak, white oak, chestnut, oak, hickory, tulip poplar, walnut, cherry, maples, ash, birch, basswood and so on. We are so blessed to live in this region of deciduous beauty. Our forest resources have tremendous beauty, but they also provide us with much bounty, and that must be respected, understood and included in forest management plans. All living things die. In death, there is life. We know that all living things have a life cycle, and
which was extended last July and which will expire in mid2013. Because of the current federal budget crisis, Congress has been considering alternate funding sources from the payments out of the federal treasury provided by Secure Rural Schools, but finding new funding sources in an age of tremendous fiscal shortfalls that do not jeopardize our clean water, wildlife, and public lands is a challenge. In the short term, Congress can create breathing room for communities that need these funds through an emergency extension and reauthorization of the Secure Rural Schools program. A long-term solution can then, hopefully, be crafted and adopted with bipartisan support from Congress as well as the local and national stakeholders that the Secure Rural Schools Act has enjoyed support for over a decade. The immediate need in our rural communities for these funds and the risk of failing to extend a proven program is simply too great to delay any longer. Write Congressman Mark Meadows and urge him to reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools Act. (Brent Martin is the Southern Appalachian Regional Director for The Wilderness Society in Sylva. He can be reached at brent_martin@tws.org.)
LETTERS then they will die. Managing forests requires many different approaches to handling varying ages of forest sections. The United States Forest Service is charged with managing our federal lands for multiple uses: timber, water, wildlife and recreation. Each of these objectives is carefully weighed and included in plans for our forestlands. Man can mimic natural death by timing timber harvest carefully and with full intention for each treatment area. The resource professionals allow science to direct their action, and timber management should be included in the tool belt of prescriptions, along with forest thinnings, prescribed fire, use of herbicides to eradicate invasive species and so on ... all options should be left on the table. To preserve something is to save it. A passive land management approach allows nature to take hold as it will. Man has a minimal impact on the environment and takes a hands-off attitude. To preserve the land is to lock it up and leave it. A museum mentality has taken over our national forest policy: “you can look, but not touch.” I think man should wisely use and respect our renewable resources and be encouraged to keep these large land tracts in timber rotations, rather than converting them out of a forest-use, rarely to grow trees again once paved. Conserving the resource allows us to use the bounty, sustainably, and with an eye for the next generation, leaving the land more productive and better than before. Disturbance happens. Ice, wind, fire, tornados, flooding, hurricanes, typhoons, and hail are a few natural events that wreak havoc for man on earth. Disturbances will always occur. The early Native Americans would slash and burn forests, to manage the land for their lifestyle and kept the understory growth down with prescribed fires to
encourage wildlife proliferation. Man has always worked to tame the land. Modern-day timber harvest can mimic these natural disturbances, while growing jobs, creating American-made products, and providing year-round revenue for our local economies, sustainably and perpetually. Waste not, want not. Wood is good. Trees are the gifts that keep giving. During their growing life, they provide shade, fruits and foods for man and creature alike, and provide immense beauty to our mountains. With a common-sense and pragmatic approach to land management, trees can be harvested to enjoy a whole new life of giving: in the form of a handmade generational piece of fine furniture to be coveted and passed down within a family line. Perhaps the trees will be used to fashion hardwood floors in a home to also last another lifetime. Wood is good, renewable, and can be managed in perpetuity. Please do not lock up these resources, because to watch them grow and die without using and enjoying them is a true waste of their many gifts. We need wood. With carefully planned timber harvests, brand-new money is created by taking a raw material and converting it into lumber. From there it grows into heirloom furniture, fine homes, hardwood flooring, and so on. The “leftovers” from sawdust, mulch, and chips make all sorts of items we need: juice containers, envelopes, cardboard, pressed board items, paper products etc. The “resins” go into hairspray, glues, steering wheels, spray paints and crayons. Even aspirin and ice cream contain wood products! We need wood, and trees can infinitely provide us with value-added products using carefully planned management approaches. Please allow the United States Forest Service to move forward with the project at Devil’s Courthouse. Please do not impede our natural resource professionals from actively managing